Ancient India · Topic 11 of 17
The Nastika and Astika darshanas that systematized Indian thought
The Basics
By the closing centuries before the Common Era, India's thinkers were no longer satisfied with ritual alone. The Upanishads had already raised questions about Atman, Brahman and karma, and Buddhism and Jainism had openly challenged the authority of the Vedas. This left Indian thought split into two broad camps, and ancient scholars themselves gave this split a name.
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By around the sixth century BCE, the Gangetic plains were seeing iron tools, growing trade, metal money and expanding towns. This changing world encouraged sharp, practical, this-worldly thinking, and out of it grew a school that trusted nothing beyond the senses: Charvaka.
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After Carvaka's materialist challenge, orthodox thinkers worked out detailed systems to explain the world, the self and liberation without rejecting Vedic tradition. Samkhya, whose name means 'count', is considered the oldest of the six orthodox schools, with roots going back at least to the time of the Upanishads.
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The Yoga Sutras are credited to Patanjali, though the author's identity is uncertain.
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Nyaya is a school of logic and theory of knowledge, linked closely with Vaisheshika.
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The Vaisheshika Sutra was written by Uluka Kanada, between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE.
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Purva Mimamsa is a Vedic exegesis school, explaining sacrificial injunctions in the Vedas.
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Purva Mimamsa had treated the Vedas as rules for sacrifice, keeping priests and rituals central. But the Upanishads, placed at the end of the Veda, asked a different question. Not how to perform a sacrifice correctly, but what is truly real. This strand of thinking was named Vedanta, literally 'end of the Veda', and is also called Uttara Mimamsa, the later or higher inquiry.
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The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata, dated to around 200 BCE.
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By the 8th-9th centuries, there were many rival interpretations of the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra. Buddhism, Jainism and the Bhakti sects were also competing with Brahmanism for followers.
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